Having left his life of crime behind, former getaway driver Charles "Shake" Bouchon has finally realized the dream of owning his own restaurant in Belize. Unfortunately, to do so he's had to go deep in debt to a murderous local drug lord named Baby Jesus. And when Shake thwarts an attempted hit on an elderly customer named Quinn, things go from bad to worse. Next thing Shake knows, his restaurant's gone up in flames and he's on the run from Baby Jesus, two freelance assassins, and a beautiful but ferocious FBI agent. Out of options, Shake has to turn to the mysterious Quinn for help.

Gutshot Straight

When Charles "Shake" Bouchon, professional wheel man, walks out of prison after a three-year stretch for grand theft auto, he's got only two problems: he's too nice a guy for the life he's led and not nice enough for any other. So he says yes when he's asked to run a simple errand for his former boss and lover, Alexandra Ilandryan, the formidable pakhan of the Armenian mob in Los Angeles.

Bull Mountain

Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations the Burroughs clan has made their home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family's criminal empire, Clayton takes the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can.

The Marauders: A Novel

When the BP oil spill devastates the Gulf Coast, those who made a living by shrimping find themselves in dire straits. For the oddballs and lowlifes who inhabit the sleepy, working-class bayou town of Jeannette, these desperate circumstances serve as the catalyst that pushes them to enact whatever risky schemes they can dream up to reverse their fortunes. At the center of it all is Gus Lindquist, a pill-addicted, one-armed treasure hunter obsessed with finding the lost treasure of pirate Jean Lafitte.

Life or Death

Audie Palmer has spent 10 years in a Texas prison after pleading guilty to a robbery in which four people died and seven million dollars went missing. During that time he has suffered repeated beatings, stabbings and threats by inmates and guards, all desperate to answer the same question: where's the money?

Dry Bones: A Walt Longmire Mystery

When Jen, the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found, surfaces in Sherriff Walt Longmire's jurisdiction, it appears to be a windfall for the High Plains Dinosaur Museum - until Danny Lone Elk, the Cheyenne rancher on whose property the remains were discovered, turns up dead, floating face down in a turtle pond. With millions of dollars at stake, a number of groups step forward to claim her, including Danny's family, the tribe, and the federal government.

Bad Country

Rodeo Grace Garnet lives alone, save for his old dog, in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as the Hole. He doesn't get many visitors, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border just south of the Hole, but is instead a member of one of the local Indian tribes.

Gun Street Girl: A Detective Sean Duffy Novel, The Troubles, Book 4

Belfast, 1985. Amid the Troubles, Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, struggles with burnout as he investigates a brutal double murder and suicide. Did Michael Kelly really shoot his parents at point-blank range and then jump off a nearby cliff? A suicide note points to this conclusion, but Duffy suspects even more sinister circumstances.

The Whites: A Novel

Back in the run-and-gun days of the mid-'90s, when Billy Graves worked in the South Bronx as part of an anticrime unit known as the Wild Geese, he made headlines by accidentally shooting a 10-year-old boy while stopping an angel-dusted berserker in the street. Branded as a cowboy by his higher-ups, for the next 18 years Billy endured one dead-end posting after another.

Bradley P. Valentine says:"Richard Price sets the high water mark in genre"

Palace of Treason: A Novel

Captain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) has returned from the West to Moscow and the Center, the headquarters of her service. She finds things worse than when she left. She despises the men she must serve, the oligarchs and crooks and thugs of Putin's Russia. What no one knows is that Dominika is working for the CIA as Washington's most sensitive penetration of SVR and the Kremlin.

Impasse: A Novel

Forty and facing a midlife crisis, Stu Stark has lost his mojo. He simply gave up after being fired from his prestigious job as a prosecuting attorney for losing the biggest case of his career. So when Stu's best friend gifts him a one-week trip into the Alaskan wilderness to rediscover his manhood, Stu thinks it just might do him some good. But after a horrible week, Stu is crushed when he realizes no one is coming back for him.

Reykjavik Nights

The loner, Erlendur, has recently joined the police force as a young officer. The beat on the streets in ReykjavIk is busy: traffic accidents, theft, domestic violence, contraband.... And an unexplained death. When a tramp he met regularly on the night shift is found drowned in a ditch, no one seems to care. But his fate haunts Erlendur and drags him inexorably into the strange and dark underworld of the city.

Cash Landing: A Novel

Every week a hundred million dollars in cash arrives at Miami International Airport, shipped by German banks to the Federal Reserve. A select group of trusted workers moves the bags through customs and loads them into armored trucks.

The Ploughmen: A Novel

At the center of this searing fever-dream of a novel are two men - a killer awaiting trial and a troubled young deputy - sitting across fromeach other in the dark, talking through the bars of a county jail cell: JohnGload, so brutally adept at his craft that only now, at the age of 77, has he faced the prospect of long-term incarceration; and Valentine Millimaki, low man in the Copper County sheriff's department, who draws the overnight shift after Gload's arrest.

The Dark Art: My Undercover Life in Global Narco-Terrorism

Over the course of his 27 years with the DEA, Ed Follis bought eight-balls of cocaine in a red Corvette, negotiated multimillion-dollar deals onboard private King Airs, and developed covert relationships with men who were not only international drug traffickers but - in some cases - operatives for al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Shan United Army, or the Mexican federation of cartels. Follis was, in fact, one of the driving forces behind the agency's radical shift from a limited local focus to a global arena.

World Gone By: A Novel

Ten years have passed since Joe Coughlin's enemies killed his wife and destroyed his empire, and much has changed. Prohibition is dead, the world is at war again, and Joe's son, Tomas, is growing up. Now the former crime kingpin works as a consigliore to the Bartolo crime family, traveling between Tampa and Cuba, his wife's homeland.

Dead Aim

Dead Aim marks the always welcome return of Joe R. Lansdale's most enduring fictional creations: Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. The story begins simply enough when the two agree to provide protection for a woman harassed by her violent, soon-to-be-ex-husband. But when a protracted stakeout ends in a lethal shooting and a pair of moldering corpses turn up in an otherwise deserted trailer, the nature of this "routine" assignment changes dramatically.

Robert B. Parker's The Bridge

Territorial Marshals Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are back in Appaloosa, where their work enforcing the law has been exceptionally quiet. All that is about to change. An ominous storm rolls in, and along with it a band of night riders with a devious scheme, who show up at the Rio Blanco camp, where a three-hundred-foot bridge is under construction.

Borderline: A Hard Case Crime Novel

On the border between El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, five lives are about to collide - with fatal results. This is MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block at his rawest and most visceral, a bloody, bawdy, brutal story of passion and punishment - and of lines that were never meant to be crossed - available for the first time in 50 years!

Dead Low Tide: A Novel

A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. A college graduate and amateur fisherman, Andy McClintock is stuck toiling in the office of a construction company. But when Andy tries to quit, his boss offers him a promotion and a raise - and then promptly kills himself with a harpoon gun. At least, that's what it looks like, until the police rule it homicide - with the murder weapon belonging to Andy.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Alaska State Trooper Liam Campbell, newly promoted to corporal, is slowly making a home for himself in the remote town of Newenham. Between DUIs and domestic disputes, life is relatively tranquil, until Campbell's girlfriend, bush pilot Wyanet Chouinard, delivers a shipment of mail to a remote post office, where she finds the postmistress murdered. The hunt is on for a killer who seems to have vanished into the Bush... Until another victim is found. Chilling connections from the past make the search a matter of life and death.

PerryMartinBookReviews says:"Love and Murder book 3 in Liam Campbell Series"

Nobody's Perfect: A Dortmunder Novel, Book 4

It would take a miracle to keep Dortmunder out of jail. Though he cased the electronics store perfectly, the cops surprised him, turning up in the alley just as he was walking out the back door, a television in each hand. Already a two-time loser, without divine intervention he faces a long stretch inside. Then God sends J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, a celebrity lawyer who gets Dortmunder off with hardly any effort at all. Stonewiler was sent by Arnold Chauncey, an art lover with a cash-flow problem. He asks the thief to break into his house and make off with a valuable painting in exchange for a quarter of the insurance money.

Florida Straits: A Key West Mystery, Book 1

In the grand tradition of Elmore Leonard, Laurence Shames creates an outrageous heavyweight thriller that’s heavy on atmosphere and action. Joey Goldman is a low-level New York hustler. He’s taking a working vacation in South Florida and looking to score big with a time-share scam. His half brother Gino Delgatto is a man in need of a fall guy. When they meet in Key West, the term dysfunctional family takes on a new meaning. Will one of them succeed? Or will the Miami mob find an eye-popping way to dispose of them both?

Border War

The border is a tough place to work, especially for FBI agent Tom Eriksen. With a history of violence, he cannot afford any on-duty screw-ups. So when an investigation ends in a bloody shootout and the shooting is deemed "questionable", the bureau reassigns Eriksen to an office known as "the Island of Misfit Cops": A resting place for those who have screwed up enough to warrant being dumped in El Paso. But when his partner is murdered, Eriksen must take charge and solve the case, wading through corruption and betrayal to discover the truth.

Bagmen: Victor Carl, Book 8

At a low point in his lowly career, Victor finds himself skulking through the streets of Philadelphia carrying a bag full of money for an ambitious politician. It is a rotten job on the wrong side of anyone’s line, but with bag in hand Victor is suddenly hobnobbing with the city’s elite, filling his bank account, and having sex with the politician’s gorgeous and deranged sister. But just when Victor begins to think he’s got a future in the political game, one of his payoffs ends up in the pocket of a dead woman, and Victor goes from bagman to fall guy.

Publisher's Summary

Having left his life of crime behind, former getaway driver Charles "Shake" Bouchon has finally realized the dream of owning his own restaurant in Belize. Unfortunately, to do so he's had to go deep in debt to a murderous local drug lord named Baby Jesus. And when Shake thwarts an attempted hit on an elderly customer named Quinn, things go from bad to worse.

Next thing Shake knows, his restaurant's gone up in flames and he's on the run from Baby Jesus, two freelance assassins, and a beautiful but ferocious FBI agent. Out of options, Shake has to turn to the mysterious Quinn for help. Suddenly Shake's up to his neck in a dangerous score that he'll never pull off unless he can convince an even more dangerous ex-girlfriend to join him.

Jeff Gurney is a great narrator and does a great job on this book. Unfortunately Edoardo Balerino's reading of the first Shake Bouchant mystery, Gutshot Straight, captured the main character so perfectly any substitute would look like Roger Moore to Sean Connery.

Nevertheless Whiplash River is good mystery featuring truly entertaining characters so well developed I felt like they were old friends. It is funny and plays like a great Elmore Leonard movie.

I'm hoping this is second in a series, starting with 'Gutshot Straight'. I agree with a reviewer of 'Gutshot Straight' who said that Berney writes like a combination of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. This second novel has the hero, Shake, caught up with other vividly drawn characters in a fast paced plot with lots of twists and turns. I found myself smiling and laughing aloud as I listened to the characters' responses to murder and mayhem. The third book can't come along soon enough for me.

I thought the first Shake Bouchon book, Gutshot Straight, was pretty good. The character is interesting. However, the second book verges on gibberish. There is an old guy named Quinn, who talks so much that you really want him to STFU. Shake has opened a restaurant in Belize, and is in debt to a humongous loan shark named Baby Jesus. The restaurant is shot up and explodes. There is a bad-guy couple, and an FBI lady who is a good guy. I enjoy almost anything that Edoardo Balerini reads, but even a good narrator can't do much for a mediocre book. Like putting lipstick on a pig, as someone said. I gave up about two thirds of the way through. You might enjoy the first book by Lou Berney, but this one is not worth your time.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Berney's second book is not as developed as his first and his selection of narrator almost renders book unreadable (hard to listen to).

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The return of the characters from the first book--Shake, Gina, and Jasper. They were fully developed in the first book and return with half their personality but I'm glad to see them again.

What didn’t you like about Jeff Gurner’s performance?

Everything. He doesn't distinguish between characters, doesn't grasp Shake's emotional tones and ruins the relationship between Gina and Shake. The characters blend together as there is little emphasis and nuances between them. Bad narrator.

Any additional comments?

It's sad to see an author's second book stray so far from his first work.

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